Did Arkansas' General Holmes Lose Vicksburg?

He refused to leave Arkansas and co-operate with the Confederate plans to fight Grant.
He said it would lose Arkansas.
Johnston wanted to be put over a Tennessee and Arkansas command instead of Tennessee and Mississippi because he saw how much closer the Arkansas troops all were to help in this fight.

Maybe Pemberton wasn't the only one to blame for Vicksburg?

How much did General Holmes view change the war in this arena?
Interesting question.

IMO, General Holmes had no impact on anything related to the Vicksburg campaign.
 
Last edited:
He refused to leave Arkansas and co-operate with the Confederate plans to fight Grant.
He said it would lose Arkansas.
Johnston wanted to be put over a Tennessee and Arkansas command instead of Tennessee and Mississippi because he saw how much closer the Arkansas troops all were to help in this fight.

Maybe Pemberton wasn't the only one to blame for Vicksburg?

How much did General Holmes view change the war in this arena?

Pemberton absolutely wasn't the only one to blame for Vicksburg. But I'm not sure how much of the fault to lay with Holmes. IIRC, J Johnston saw that to defend the Mississippi River valley it was necessary to think of it as a region rather than a departmental boundary marker, but Davis never made the change. Do you know if Holmes ever disobeyed any orders to come to the defense of Vicksburg or to bring whatever he could east (as Van Dorn had done after Shiloh) even if that left Arkansas unguarded?
 
Jeff Davis lost Vicksburg the moment he strategically decided to focus his army to defending Richmond and letting all Mississippi go, thus cutting off the Confederacy in half leaving it biggest state (TX) on the wrong side... That bad decision making started with moving the capital of the CSA from Montgomery to Richmond that is 100 miles away from Washington...

I never understood why the Confederacy moved the capitol to Richmond.
 
Pemberton absolutely wasn't the only one to blame for Vicksburg. But I'm not sure how much of the fault to lay with Holmes. IIRC, J Johnston saw that to defend the Mississippi River valley it was necessary to think of it as a region rather than a departmental boundary marker, but Davis never made the change. Do you know if Holmes ever disobeyed any orders to come to the defense of Vicksburg or to bring whatever he could east (as Van Dorn had done after Shiloh) even if that left Arkansas unguarded?

No. I don't think he was ordered. But he was begged, nearly. I really think Jeff Davis didn't know what to do so he never ordered his friend to do what he himself was not sure of entirely. But he did ask as did other, IIRC.
 
No. I don't think he was ordered. But he was begged, nearly. I really think Jeff Davis didn't know what to do so he never ordered his friend to do what he himself was not sure of entirely. But he did ask as did other, IIRC.

The constant dilemma being what Ellensar said (#9): "The Confederacy does not have enough troops to go around." So the fault, if any, is failure to decide strategic priorities and stick to them. Again, Holmes? Pemberton? J Johnston? Davis? All of the above? No one (i.e., the impossible situation itself)?
 
This is a book review of Theophilus Hunter Holmes: A North Carolina General in the Civil War by Walter C. Hilderman:

Latter day appreciation of Civil War generals typically centers on either their battlefield genius or administrative talent (rarely both), the latter encompassing a broad range of useful wartime skills such as political acumen, recruitment, subordinate talent recognition, and civil/military organization. Few knowledgeable persons will be willing to defend the generalship of Confederate Lieutenant General Theophilus Holmes, but author Walter Hilderman, in his new book Theophilus Hunter Holmes: A North Carolina General in the Civil War, argues that the high ranking Tarheel officer's leadership role in maximizing state manpower mobilization during 1864-65 makes his service deserving of greater recognition.

According to the author, Holmes left behind little in the way of personal papers and no postwar writings (though several manuscript collections located in Virginia and North Carolina archives are listed in the bibliography), making the task of the biographer difficult. In typical Civil War military biography fashion, Hilderman begins his study with Holmes's West Point years, moving from there to the young officer's early professional career, which was comprised of involvement in the Indian Removal affairs of the 1830s and fighting in the Seminole and Mexican-American wars. These sections do not provide a great deal in the way of details specific to Holmes, but rather more of a general discussion of events. In what fashion these earlier conflicts might have informed Holmes's Civil War service is not a source of serious speculation.

Significant new information related to Holmes's Virginia, North Carolina, and Arkansas commands is not apparent. Contemporary allegations that Holmes was tardy in moving toward Manassas, missing the 1861 battle, remain without foundation. The conventional criticisms surrounding the general's performance during the Seven Days have softened over time, and Hilderman finds himself in accordance with the view that poor army-level staff work and situational confusion emanating from the top were arguably more responsible for Holmes's perceived timidity on June 30 than the aging general's mental and physical limitations. His command grade was certainly no worse than any of a number of others with similar levels of responsibility on that day, or the next. Holmes's infamous deafness is not a source of additional inquiry in the book beyond the author's finding that no primary source exists for the "I thought I heard firing" quote so often repeated in the literature in mocking fashion. The chapters related to Holmes's department and district level leadership in the Trans-Mississippi during 1862-63, including his direction of the disastrous July 1863 assault on Helena, Arkansas, are conventional in content and analysis.

Hilderman's discussion of Holmes's unpopular time in Arkansas (mostly as a desk general) is not especially supportive of his study's thesis that Holmes rendered valuable administrative service to the Confederacy. Rather it is in North Carolina where this view is best reinforced. During the final twelve months of the war, Holmes was tasked with raising and organizing new state reserve forces. The intention behind such further robbing from the cradle and the grave was to use these formations to release regular Confederate garrison troops in North Carolina for more active service in Virginia, where they were direly needed. Hilderman, the author of a 2006 study of conscription in North Carolina, is well suited to document this aspect of the state's Civil War history, and it is indeed the best part of the book. With limited resources, Holmes was able to both enforce Confederate conscription in the state and mobilize Junior and Senior Reserve regiments numbering around 10,000 older men and boys. Their efficiency was mixed, but, given the inherent limitations, more could hardly be expected.

Recognizing the talents of subordinates, mentoring them, and actively promoting their career advancement is an important part of the job of high ranking military officers, and its clear from Hilderman's biography that Holmes took this responsibility seriously. Members of his staff, most notably James Deshler, became generals and Holmes repeatedly reminded Richmond authorities of the work of other talented individuals like Major Peter Mallett, who served under Holmes at Aquia Creek in 1861 and later successfully managed an entire network of conscription offices in North Carolina. An important benefit of Hilderman's study is that it should disabuse readers of the popular notion that Holmes was senile and devoid of any useful attributes. No one will take from Hilderman's biography a belief that Theophilus Holmes was a misunderstood gem of a Confederate general, but the book does provide the most fair minded assessment of the general's career yet published. Scholars of Confederate conscription will also find this study to be a useful tool.

http://cwba.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/hilderman-theophilus-hunter-holmes.html
 
So Holmes was Regular Army? Or at least had been? I think even Price would have been better. Price was at least aggressive. Maybe he wouldn't have crossed the river either.
Cullum's Register entry for Theophilus Holmes outlining his regular army career.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer...d_States/Army/USMA/Cullums_Register/584*.html

The situation with Price was part of Holmes' problem, not that it was either of their fault. In the aftermath of the Battles of Pea Ridge and Shiloh Price and his Missouri troops were transferred across the Mississippi River to Beauregard's command at Corinth. While in Mississippi he participated in the Battle of Iuka and the Second Battle of Corinth. In early 1863 Price traveled to Richmond to meet with Confederate officials in an effort to obtain a transfer back to Arkansas for himself and his Missouri men. The meetings did not go particularly well, Price obtained his transfer, arriving in time to participate in the Battle of Helena, but his troops remained in Mississippi under the command of John Pemberton.
 
Very interesting thread. I like ya'lls take on the problem with Holmes. I'd like to hear rpkennedy's take on Sterling Price, and like Blue Mississipan, I've never understood the movement of the capital to Richmond.
 
I wish he would post why he thought Price so bad. I would really like to know.

Sorry but I haven't had a chance to respond until now.

Price was mildly competent but was a difficult man to deal with. He couldn't get along with Ben McCulloch and hated Earl Van Dorn. Jefferson Davis thought he was one of the vainest men he had met (and that's saying something). And his raid in 1864 was a disaster because he fought when he didn't need to, costing him men and time.

His strength was that he commanded the loyalty of his Missourians, something the Confederacy in the West and Trans-Misissippi very much needed. Certainly, few thought of him nearly as highly as he himself did.

R
 
Perhaps part of the problem was the idea that troops or armies "belonged" to a particular commander, state, or department. Several posts here describe commanders essentially negotiating whether or not to send troops where they were required. The Confederates, being overall outnumbered, needed to be able to deploy their forces wherever needed. Their high command needed to set priorities and enforce flexibility.

It seems clear that they tied down an excessive proportion of their best troops and commanders in Virginia. Virginia would have been an important theater even if Richmond was not the capital, but perhaps they could have had a more balanced allocation of resources and, even more important, made better use of their key advantage of interior lines.

Every Confederate state contributed troops to the ANV, but Virginia troops rarely served outside the Virginia theater. There was some basis for this, particularly for cavalry and artillery which depended on steady supply of replacement horses, but it does seem ironic that troops from Mississippi or Georgia were defending Virginia while their home states were being invaded. Even when Longstreet was sent from the ANV to Bragg, one of the Confederacy's best moves, Pickett's battered Virginia division was left behind.
 
He refused to leave Arkansas and co-operate with the Confederate plans to fight Grant.
He said it would lose Arkansas.
Johnston wanted to be put over a Tennessee and Arkansas command instead of Tennessee and Mississippi because he saw how much closer the Arkansas troops all were to help in this fight.

Maybe Pemberton wasn't the only one to blame for Vicksburg?

How much did General Holmes view change the war in this arena?

Historian Stephen Woodworth of TCU in his bootk "Jefferson Davis and His Generals" takes Davis to task for the way he drew the departments. He always used the Mississippi as a border between two departments rather than seeing the river as the center of a critically important one. This directly led to the what you are asking about -- a sizeable number of troops kept apart from strategically important action. It is true that the states wanted their troops to remain local, and in Arkansas this was not unreasonable as Federal cavalry and guerillas roamed the Ozarks and gunboats would come up the Arkansas and White rivers. However, if Vicksburg fell, the access -- and numbers of Federal troops -- would only increase the incursions into the state, as witnessed by the campaign that captured Little Rock the autumn after Vicksburg's surrender.

Holmes was not a good commander. He was stone deaf and his mental activity seemed as flat as his hearing. The Trans-Mississippi actually had some good commanders at times -- Hindman before Holmes and Smith and Taylor after Holmes -- but during the most critical campaign of the West, it was Holmes who was in charge. Davis picked him for this post and he picked the wrong guy. Had he been more aggressive and active in the spring of '63 while Grant was floundering in the swamps, he perhaps would have made Grant to nervous to risk his bold move south of Vicksburg. He also could have crossed over to the east side of the river, which numerically would have made Grant's gambit far riskier against bigger odds and more likelihood of being discovered and delayed, which would have been a serious peril.
 
Sorry but I haven't had a chance to respond until now.

Price was mildly competent but was a difficult man to deal with. He couldn't get along with Ben McCulloch and hated Earl Van Dorn. Jefferson Davis thought he was one of the vainest men he had met (and that's saying something). And his raid in 1864 was a disaster because he fought when he didn't need to, costing him men and time.

His strength was that he commanded the loyalty of his Missourians, something the Confederacy in the West and Trans-Misissippi very much needed. Certainly, few thought of him nearly as highly as he himself did.

R

Very fair and accurate assessment of Pap, in my opinion. His men seemed to like him though. He was a big guy with an oversized personality and that package seemed to work with what was essentially an army of backwoodsmen.
 
Sorry but I haven't had a chance to respond until now.

Price was mildly competent but was a difficult man to deal with. He couldn't get along with Ben McCulloch and hated Earl Van Dorn. Jefferson Davis thought he was one of the vainest men he had met (and that's saying something). And his raid in 1864 was a disaster because he fought when he didn't need to, costing him men and time.

His strength was that he commanded the loyalty of his Missourians, something the Confederacy in the West and Trans-Misissippi very much needed. Certainly, few thought of him nearly as highly as he himself did.

R

Ok. Even though he and his men fought all around here I have never read a biography of him. I knew Missouri troops were loyal to him but he may not have been the right man either.
 
Holmes is subjected to much well deserved criticism, but to blame him above others (such as Pemberton, Johnston and Davis) seems quite a stretch. I have to ask what is it that he could/should have done in maintaining a position outside his department? I haven't really looked close at the command decisions made in his department that winter. Arkansas Post was a disaster and I'm sure manpower was quite limited after that.

I have been reading letters by Capt Elijah Petty (17th TX) so I know Walkers Division was put on the move, leaving their winter quarters near Pine Bluff in late April and arriving at Monroe LA by early May. They then boarded steamers and headed down the river (the Ouchita) but after 70 miles turned around and were back in Monroe by the 10th. Petty moved back and forth several more times, but only got into action against the Federals at Milliken's Bend on 6/7, and some skirmishes en route to that point. The route taken get there was actually quite roundabout, Monroe to Delhi (about 40 miles on I-20 today) via Bienville, Campti, Alexandria, Tensas River and Bayou Macoun. Petty states on 5/27 "Why all this boxing the compass this marching and countermarching I can hardly form a conjecture."
 
I have been reading letters by Capt Elijah Petty (17th TX) so I know Walkers Division was put on the move, leaving their winter quarters near Pine Bluff in late April and arriving at Monroe LA by early May. They then boarded steamers and headed down the river (the Ouchita) but after 70 miles turned around and were back in Monroe by the 10th. Petty moved back and forth several more times, but only got into action against the Federals at Milliken's Bend on 6/7, and some skirmishes en route to that point. The route taken get there was actually quite roundabout, Monroe to Delhi (about 40 miles on I-20 today) via Bienville, Campti, Alexandria, Tensas River and Bayou Macoun. Petty states on 5/27 "Why all this boxing the compass this marching and countermarching I can hardly form a conjecture."

When Taylor's position in southern Louisiana fell apart after Banks moved up the Teche in early April, Kirby-Smith called for Walker to be come from Arkansas to help. Initially Walker was supposed to come down by river to meet Taylor at Alexandria, but in early May Banks and the Navy captured Alexandria and Taylor retreated toward Shreveport. So Walker went back to Monroe then headed west overland, getting as far as Campti. By this point Banks had left Alexandria to besiege Port Hudson. So Taylor, with Walker, followed down river to Alexandria then turned north up the Tensas to attack Grant's base at Milliken.
 
Back
Top